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The difference between pointing by the Great Ape Trust bonobos - the only ones in the world with receptive competence for spoken English - and other captive apes that make hand gestures is explained by the culture in which they were reared, according to the paper's authors: Janni Pedersen, an Iowa State University Ph.D. candidate conducting research for her dissertation at Great Ape Trust; Pär Segerdahl, a scientist from Sweden who has published several philosophical inquires into language; and William M. Fields, an ethnographer investigating language, culture and tools in non-human primates. Fields also is Great Ape Trust's director of scientific research. Because Kanzi, Panbanisha and Nyota were raised in a culture where pointing has a purpose - The Trust's hallmark Pan/Homo environment, where infant bonobos are reared with both bonobo (Pan paniscus) and human (Homo sapiens) influences - their pointing is as scientifically meaningful as their understanding of spoken English, Fields said. The pointing study supports and builds on previous research on the effect of rearing culture on cognitive capabilities, including the 40-year research corpus of Dr. Duane Rumbaugh, Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Fields, which is the foundation of the scientific inquiry at Great Ape Trust. Those studies included the breakthrough finding that Kanzi and other bonobos with receptive competence for spoken English acquired language as human children do - by being exposed to it since infancy. The bonobos adopted finger-pointing behavior for the same reasons, because they were reared in a culture where pointing has meaning.

This is the largest nationally representative study to date of the toll taken by sepsis and pneumonia, two conditions often caused by deadly microbes, including the antibiotic-resistant bacteria MRSA. Such infections can lead to longer hospital stays, serious complications and even death. "In many cases, these conditions could have been avoided with better infection control in hospitals," said Ramanan Laxminarayan, Ph.D., principal investigator for Extending the Cure, a project examining antibiotic resistance based at the Washington, D.C. think-tank Resources for the Future. "Infections that are acquired during the course of a hospital stay cost the United States a staggering amount in terms of lives lost and health care costs," he said. "Hospitals and other health care providers must act now to protect patients from this growing menace." Laxminarayan and his colleagues analyzed 69 million discharge records from hospitals in 40 states and identified two conditions caused by health care-associated infections: sepsis, a potentially lethal systemic response to infection and pneumonia, an infection of the lungs and respiratory tract. The researchers looked at infections that developed after hospitalization. They zeroed in on infections that are often preventable, like a serious bloodstream infection that occurs because of a lapse in sterile technique during surgery, and discovered that the cost of such infections can be quite high: For example, people who developed sepsis after surgery stayed in the hospital 11 days longer and the infections cost an extra $33,000 to treat per person. Even worse, the team found that nearly 20 percent of people who developed sepsis after surgery died as a result of the infection. "That's the tragedy of such cases," said Anup Malani, a study co-author, investigator at Extending the Cure, and professor at the University of Chicago. "In some cases, relatively healthy people check into the hospital for routine surgery. They develop sepsis because of a lapse in infection control—and they can die." The team also looked at pneumonia, an infection that can set in if a disease-causing microbe gets into the lungs—in some cases when a dirty ventilator tube is used. They found that people who developed pneumonia after surgery, which is also thought to be preventable, stayed in the hospital an extra 14 days. Such cases cost an extra $46,000 per person to treat. In 11 percent of the cases, the patient died as a result of the pneumonia infection.